


downstream

by unsungillumination



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love, it goes like this: sylvain loves felix who loves dimitri who is just an egg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 18:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21001964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsungillumination/pseuds/unsungillumination
Summary: perhaps such a great human mystery aslovemight be described in comparison to a river, because they've known it only to flow in one direction. or perhaps love is like a big heavy hammer because it smacked sylvain really hard in the head and now everything just kind of hurts.





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**Author's Note:**

> ciil @hellaaa [tweeted](https://twitter.com/hellaaa/status/1179980597852131328): "*clasping hands together* one-sided dimilix but thru sylvain's pov"
> 
> the format of this fic is, shall we say, experimental. but does it make _sense_, you ask me. it is not for us mortals to know, i tell you, and disappear into the winds with my friends, the ants__

  1. _ things everyone already knows_

Sylvain is not a romantic, and this doesn’t change with Felix. Maybe that’s a little surprising. Maybe not, though, not really.

He watches Felix train. He does it a lot, these days. Felix stopped trying to kick him out after the first week. Maybe that would be a sign, if Sylvain believed in signs, but he doesn’t and nor does he actually believe in much besides. No point reading into the little things when the big ones tell him what’s what, loud and clear. Felix stopped trying to kick him out because Sylvain never leaves, so there’s no point, and Felix is nothing if not a pragmatist except maybe a little too pretty with a sword in his fist and his hair flying everywhere.

“Watch those bangs,” Sylvain shouts cheerfully. “Want me to help with your hair? It’ll stay out of your face better if we do it up in little plaits—I know a girl if you’re interested.”

Felix takes another vicious swipe at the dummy, pushes his hair out of his face and keeps it back with sweat (_gross, and yet_), and turns around red and out of breath to flip him off.

Sylvain holds up his hands. “Just a suggestion.”

There was no—how you say—_oh_ moment. There was no _bam!_ realisation. Sylvain looks back often, on happier days or what he assumes must have been happier days, if not for him then for _someone_, and Felix is always there—but when he tries to pin down the feeling that accompanies Felix’s face in his memory, he can’t. He can’t even watch it change or figure out _if_ it changes, let alone narrow it down to when. There’s no _that’s when I knew_. There’s no _and from now on I’m in love_.

Hm. Is that what it is now? Excellent question. “Watch your footing.”

“I _know_,” Felix snaps, adjusting himself right before he trips.

Felix trains for hours at a time, so Sylvain stays for hours at a time, which suits him fine. It’s not like he’s got much else to do, at least not during the daylight hours. He’s not here to wax poetic. He’s heard girls in the hallways gush about Felix and his _midnight hair_ and his _golden orbs_ and, you know, the standard stuff he’d probably spout back at them, but not with actual sincerity. Makes him feel a bit sick.

It’s just nice to watch Felix. It’s always been nice. He’s so _serious_, sincere in a way at once completely identical to and utterly different from Dimitri and then again from Ingrid. Sylvain’s always been the most light-hearted of the four of them—well, no, light-_hearted_ is a bit much. The most easy-going. The most good-humoured. Felix wears his hurt on his sword arm and Sylvain buried his under some tree years ago before the forest went up. It’s weirdly captivating to see it manifest in those crisp, brutal movements instead of whatever unhealthy disaster Sylvain’s got going on. Felix really has gotten good with a sword.

But there’s a problem, because of course there’s a problem, because there’s always a problem, and that’s that Sylvain watching Felix so often means he sees quite a lot of Felix (which is not the problem), which means he sees most-if-not-all of Felix’s _limited_ interactions with everyone else at the monastery (which is approaching the problem), which means he sees how Felix reacts to Dimitri (which is not the problem everyone else thinks it is and actually shouldn’t be a problem except that Sylvain is a selfish fucking asshole who knows both of them way too well).

Ah, young love. He watches Felix grit out a venomous retort (something unoriginal to do with the word _boar_, honestly, spinning words isn’t Felix’s strong suit the way it is Sylvain’s) and toss a training lance down hard at Dimitri’s feet before stalking off. He watches Dimitri look down at the lance before gingerly picking it up in one hand, watches the surface of the wood splinter slightly under Dimitri’s gentle grip anyway. Then he watches Dimitri stare slightly forlornly, ever earnestly, after Felix’s retreating back.

“Hey, Your Highness,” he says, hopping to his feet. “If Sir Grouch-A-Lot is done, wanna go a round with me?”

“Sylvain,” says Dimitri, looking surprised but pleased. “Of course.”

Sylvain grabs an iron lance off the rack and throws it to him. “So you don’t snap it before we can really get going,” he says with a wink, which makes Dimitri flush with embarrassment. “Ready to show me what you’re made of?”

Dimitri flattens him, obviously. His own fault. He doesn’t train nearly as much as the others do. But watching Dimitri clamber back off him and offer him a hand up, it’s impossible to escape the feeling that Dimitri has him beat in more ways than one and every one that matters.

“See you at dinner,” Dimitri says cheerfully. “Thanks for the match. Let’s train again sometime.”

“Yeah, you got it, Your Highness.”

Sylvain sticks around after Dimitri ambles off, going a few rounds with the training dummies Felix had abandoned. Maybe he’s hoping Felix will come back—but he doesn’t. Dimitri has brought ghosts that linger in his wake.

Waiting around for Felix to return… Sylvain’s never been a romantic. This doesn’t change with Felix, but everything else does.

* * *

  1. _ things you really don’t want to still be bitter about_

Felix is also not a romantic, though this much is not a surprise to anyone. At least, he’s not a romantic in the traditional sense. Felix sends no lingering glances, chances no gentle touches, offers no shy smiles. Sylvain knows because he watches out for them automatically. He’s manufactured each and every one on no rare occasion, distilled them all to a science, knows how to dish them out and how to spot them.

What Felix does hits far deeper—strikes him to the bone and leaves him cold. To everyone else it’s hatred, blind fury, but Sylvain knew Felix as a child and besides, there was that thing they said about the opposite of love.

Felix refuses to look Dimitri in the face but when he _does_, glaring at him with an intensity that could peel and boil flesh, Sylvain sees something raw. Something that screams _betrayal_. And maybe no-one else can see it, but Sylvain knows you can’t have betrayal without something to betray, to let down, to throw away, and a betrayal that ran so deep could only come from trust that ran deeper. And why would Felix still care enough to be so angry if he didn’t care at all?

I_ didn’t leave you_, Sylvain thinks more than once. _I stayed._

But Felix doesn’t look at him with anything like that and Sylvain starts to wonder what kind of fucked up jealous narcissist complex he’s got going on that he wishes Felix hated him as much as His Highness Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd.

* * *

  1. _ maybe we all have some ghosts._

A recollection:

Sylvain was three years older but ever eager to bond with anyone who actually wanted him around. He remembered, earlier in life and dumber and brighter-eyed, wanting somehow to win his brother over. Even then he’d worked out fairly quickly that that was something of a pipe dream. This he can pin down—it had been somewhere around Ingrid and Felix pulling him out of that well Miklan had pushed him into while Dimitri sprinted for help.

He never actually hated his brother. Or at least he didn’t think he did. The taste was nastier when he thought of his parents. Miklan was cruel, but he made sense.

Felix’s eyes when they’d finally dragged him out of the well were round and alarmed. Sylvain had been cold and shivering and sad in a way he’d never really learned how to process or contain—the only thing he could remember thinking was _this is what it feels like_. Felix wasn’t looking at him like that because of his Crest. Ingrid and Dimitri didn’t, either. It was why he’d clung so closely to them, three years older and playing the big brother until all of them were well old enough and strong enough to take care of themselves, which didn’t take long. When his parents welcomed him back from the well, and again from that icy mountainside, it wasn’t with the same wide-eyed look Felix had given him. If Sylvain died, his parents would lose an heir. Felix would lose a friend.

A further recollection: Felix ran to Sylvain first whenever he was upset, because Sylvain was the one who would make it better. Otherwise, he ran to Dimitri.

* * *

  1. _ what to do when they’re your own damn friends:_

Dimitri still tries at mealtimes to engage Felix in conversation, on the few occasions Felix allows him the adjacent seat (usually because Byleth had insisted). Sylvain watches Dimitri’s peace offerings—_Now I remember. You used to like meat. You can have mine if you want, Felix_—and Felix’s rebuffs, and can’t quite suppress the petty thought _I never forgot_.

“No, thanks,” Felix mutters. “I don’t want it. You eat it.” A pause, then: “Don’t want you fainting from hunger.”

Dimitri smiles warmly at him and returns to his plate, so Sylvain returns to his own. Felix is poking more glumly at his own dish now than before. He doesn’t steal little sideways glances the way a girl would. The stony way he stares into his stew says a lot more. The Felix that Sylvain remembers from their youth refused to eat unless he was within viewing distance of his best friend. Seated right beside him, Felix’s determination not to so much as look at Dimitri is a silent protest, and the way Felix’s entire face tightens whenever Dimitri around is more than just anger. It makes something in Sylvain’s chest ache.

“I’m done,” says Felix, standing up abruptly and grabbing a surprised Annette’s empty plate, stacking it on his own to bring it back to the kitchen. “I’m going to train.”

“I’ll see you there later. Maybe we can spar for a while,” says Dimitri.

Felix grunts a non-answer and walks off. Dimitri bites his lip.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Sylvain says before he can stop himself. “I know you’re thinking it.”

“How can you say he doesn’t?” Dimitri asks. He shakes his head. “I wondered why, but… Well, he made it very clear to me.”

Sylvain doesn’t know and he doesn’t ask. “If you’re still waiting on Felix to be totally honest about his feelings, you’ll die a lonely old man, Your Highness.”

Dimitri snorts. “He certainly pulls no punches with me.”

“Okay. He’s honest with his _negative_ feelings.” Sylvain laughs. “Remember what he was like as a kid? That little guy could never hate his favourite Dima.”

Dimitri looks away, torn between embarrassment and some slight sadness. “Times change, Sylvain. So do people.”

“Maybe,” says Sylvain. “But they don’t go away. And the Felix I know isn’t _ever_ gonna stop caring about you, whether he likes it or not.”

Dimitri shoots him a warm, grateful smile, and stands up. “May I take your plate?”

“Oh, I couldn’t, Your Highness,” says Sylvain, grinning and standing up too. “Here, allow me.”

“Come now, don’t be like that,” Dimitri laughs. “We’ve known each other for years. Let’s go to the kitchen together, then.”

“A chance for a heart-to-heart with my favourite little prince? How could I resist?”

He ought to have, if he had any regard for _what the heart wants_ and all that. Or maybe what the heart wants is just what Felix does. If Sylvain’s torn-up heart can still want things like that.

Besides. Dimitri looks happy, and it’s impossible not to grin back at that earnest puppy-dog smile.

* * *

  1. _ fuck_

Felix storms up to him and Sylvain has enough time to register the thought _oh, that is Felix_ before Felix has him pinned against the wall, which is mostly kind of funny because Felix is shorter than him so it’s like staring down at a small and fuming goblin or something. But also.

“Wow,” says Sylvain. “Here? Can I at least buy you—”

“Shut it,” snarls Felix. “What the _hell_ did you say to the boar?”

“Um,” says Sylvain. “I said ‘good morning’ this morning, if that’s—”

Felix huffs and whirls away, releasing Sylvain. “He’s been non-stop pestering me for days and when I told him to fuck off he said it was something _you_ said.”

On cue, the voice in Sylvain’s head: _Great work, you absolute fuckwit._

“Did I?” he says mildly. “Maybe I told him you weren’t a cheap date and now he’s trying to redistribute his wealth.”

Felix starts to puff up like an angry cat.

“Relax, Felix. The poor guy looks so lost every time you cuss him out, I told him not to let it get to him, that’s all.”

“That’s not what he said.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe you should just, you know, cut him some slack—”

“You don’t know anything.”

Sylvain snorts. “Yeah, you know better, Felix. Go ahead and cut everyone out, that’s the best option.”

“Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone?” Felix demands. “It’s none of your business.”

Sylvain frowns. “Uh, it kinda is,” he says. “We’re _friends_, Felix—or did you forget? Did you forget some of us here actually care about you?”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck _you_,” Sylvain retorts. “Stop pushing away everyone who actually wants to get close to you. Would it kill you not to be a dick?”

“Would it kill _you_ to piss off and deal with your own bullshit? Or are you too busy fucking your problems away to be useful to anyone? Get therapy,” Felix snaps, “or don’t, but stop fucking up my life if you’re bored with fucking up yours.”

“Ouch,” says Sylvain, actually stung. “Thought we were past this, Felix. Sorry for telling Dimitri you don’t hate him. Didn’t realise that was gonna _fuck up your life_ so bad.”

“Yeah, well,” Felix mutters. “Just deal with your own shit and let me deal with mine.”

“Oh, cos you’re dealing _great_. God, you’re an ass. Go deepthroat a sword or whatever you do in your spare time when you’re not cursing at innocent people.”

He anticipates it when Felix takes a swing at him but only because this is not a new move; Felix is lither, stronger, but in sheer frame and brute force Sylvain will always have him beat which is why they awkwardly tussle for a moment before crashing inelegantly to the floor and then Felix actually bites his fucking arm which Sylvain thinks is kind of uncalled for.

“What the _fuck_,” he wheezes. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

Felix is struggling; his foot is caught in Sylvain’s belt, which honestly would be kind of funny if Sylvain wasn’t mostly alarmed at the sheer level of fucked-up repression Felix clearly has going on.

“I hope you realise this is a _massive overreaction_,” Sylvain tells him. “It’s not like I told Dimitri to _do_ anything, you _have_ to realise this isn’t actually on me, so why the hell—”

“Shut up,” Felix hisses. “Just shut the hell up.” He disentangles himself and stalks off again, leaving Sylvain on the floor with a head full of _holy shit_ and _what the fuck_ and _whatever the hell those two have going on is way beyond me_.

* * *

Um, and there’s another problem, because now he’s kind of dwelling on Felix pinning him to the wall which is something he doesn’t really care to examine, thanks.

* * *

  1. _ and now for the spiral, cos c’mon, we all knew this was coming_

_Man_, this is fucked up, because it’s going on a week since Felix tried to smack him around for no reason and his hip is kind of green and bruised from falling onto the step which is super unattractive but all he’s really thinking about is how it would be kind of nice to kiss Felix’s face, which seems to come out of pretty much nowhere and is not a welcome thought at all.

Okay, he’s had the thought before. This whole _thing_ has been going on for kind of a long time, after all. But it’s starting to distil into an obsession. He’s kissing girls and thinking about how it would be nicer if they were a little taller or had inky hair or eyes like a hawk or a sword, which—and why is _that_ making it into his fantasies?—again, he’s not loving, because kissing girls is usually his escape from his myriad of issues and now it’s just pulling him deeper into his _soupe de fuckery_, which tastes bad.

Felix probably wouldn’t taste bad. Alright, stop that.

Yes he would. He eats nothing but meat and he’s always sweaty and he probably bites. Which is bad. _Bad_, Sylvain. Bad and weird and fucked up.

Unfortunately, his type. Ugh.

Dimitri had approached him the day after the scuffle, the harmless little _not-lovers spat_, with those wide, concerned eyes which make him just _so hard to be jealous of because he’s just a really nice guy_ and apologised profusely for the thing which hadn’t even been his fault, it had been Felix’s, and _no but I really think I should accept some responsibility Sylvain because I told him it_—it’s fine. It’s fine, Your Highness. Relax. Me and Felix go way back, remember? We’re cool.

Sylvain is not cool. Sylvain wants to kiss Felix as hard as Felix had tried to punch him. What the fuck.

Felix is ignoring Dimitri less. Felix is allowing Dimitri to sit by him at the table and consenting to spar with him every now and then and only storming off twice a week instead of four times. That’s progress. Improvement. He took something from his grapple with Sylvain which he will now deny to his grave. Great work, Sylvain.

Great. Work. Sylvain.

* * *

  1. _ great work sylvain_

Felix shows up at his door two days later with an extra sword and mutters something like, “You wanna train or something?” and then halfway through beating the shit out of him mumbles something else like, “Sorry, Sylvain,” which startles Sylvain so much he trips and sends them both crashing to the floor again.

“Whoops,” he laughs while Felix glowers. “Hey, I didn’t hear you apologise while I was falling over, could you repeat—”

And there’s a new bruise on his nose now from the hilt of Felix’s training sword, which he guesses kind of makes sense.

* * *

God, he wants to kiss him so bad. But the girl with the pretty raven hair who’d perked up at his last name will have to suffice instead.

* * *

  1. _ things to not keep forgetting: you have history._

A lesson in learning from the past:

Sylvain knows Felix too well. He knows Dimitri too well. But Ingrid knows _him_ too well, so it barely stings when Ingrid figures him out. What _does_ sting is that Ingrid apparently _doesn’t_ know him well enough not to ask why the hell he’s still out with girls every night if he’s feeling some kind of way about—

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t say it out loud.”

“You’re worse than he is!” she rages. “If you can’t even admit it to yourself—”

“Who said I can’t admit it to myself? I just don’t want to hear it.” Sylvain kicks at a tile. “Let it go, Ingrid.”

Ingrid shakes her head. “You can’t just be—you’re not really that stupid, are you, Sylvain? You know what we have to lose here. You’ve _seen_ it.”

He can’t hear this from her. “Just leave it, okay?”

“You have to tell him,” says Ingrid. “Sylvain, you have to. You never know in a war.” He hates it when she winces. Hates her for wincing. “You don’t know how much time you—”

“I get it,” he snaps at her. “Thanks.”

“Sylvain—”

“He’s not _Glenn_, Ingrid. _He’s_ not going to die.”

Rage flashes across Ingrid’s face and she snaps back, “_Fine_,” and storms off before he gets a faceful of the hurt in her eyes, and he buries his face in his hands and slides to the floor and wonders if he’ll ever love someone he doesn’t fucking destroy.

* * *

He offers her his lunch the next two days in a row and she forgives him, not least because Ingrid has never been good at holding a grudge and even worse at not caving in the face of food. Sylvain has always been far too good at convincing people he’s only a harmless bumbler but he won’t kid himself into thinking she’s fooled. Ingrid Brandl Galatea knows him too well. She knows his every fucked up shortcoming, the skirt-chasing being quite the fuck the least of it, and has stuck by him anyway.

She accepts his puppy eyes and proffered steak with a curled lip and a good-natured shove to his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Seriously. I was way out of line.”

“Yeah, you really were,” she tells him. “But I won’t pry anymore if you don’t want me to.”

“True friend,” he sniffs, wiping an imaginary tear. “Let me fuck up my own life in peace, mm?”

“You bet,” she says, stuffing her face with food off his plate while he laughs, propping his cheek on his hand to watch her with a fond grin. She is far too fucking good for any of them and knows it. There’s only a twinge of regret that he’s lost her as a confidant, but that’s what happens when you push everyone away who lets caring get real.

* * *

... ... ...

And then times change, like they do, sometimes.

* * *

  1. _ and you still know him too well._

When Dimitri dies, Felix does not fall apart, because that is not what Felix does. He throws himself into the hunt, into growing better, stronger, and though he never actually says as much to Sylvain, Sylvain knows he never stops searching.

_The dead are dead. The living are living._ A mantra, oft-repeated. Sylvain watches Felix betray his words so he won’t betray his heart.

Felix doesn’t crumble and hasn’t since they were children, not since Sylvain and Dimitri were there to pick up the pieces. Now he holds himself tighter; jams the shards of himself together so they won’t scatter, pressing them closer even if they pierce him until he bleeds out.

In Dimitri’s absence, Felix grows closer to Sylvain, just as it had been when they were children. It brings no satisfaction.

* * *

_Something_ returns wearing Dimitri's clothes, but the look on Felix’s face tells Sylvain this is to be no joyful reunion.

* * *

Felix is never in the training hall anymore. Sylvain still goes out of returned habit, but finally he caves and asks Byleth where he is for only the second time in their lives.

“He’s in the cathedral,” Byleth says, and if Sylvain was confident that Byleth could have facial expressions then they might look a little sad.

Yeah, Felix is there. Paces and paces back but with a direct eyeline to the sad mound of fur at the ruins. Sylvain doesn’t know what to think of Dimitri’s return, if the thing that returned was Dimitri. He cuts him more slack than Felix does. Felix reeks of pyrrhic victory and _I told you so_s, but Sylvain had never really doubted what Dimitri could become, or even what he maybe had been all along. It just didn’t bother him as much. He was what he was and the war made of him what it did, but he never stopped being Sylvain’s friend.

And besides, though Felix would throttle him for suggesting such a thing of him, Sylvain never was as principled as Felix was. You stay alive, you chase your pleasure, you do what you want and what you have to. Maybe that’s why Felix had never been as enamoured with him as he was with little mister fall from grace. Ah, for those lofty heights.

He’s not sure if Felix is sleeping. His face is sharper than it used to be. Gaunter. Age? War? Stress? Dimitri is in the cathedral at all hours and as far as Sylvain can tell, so is Felix.

Maybe they’re made for each other. Sylvain has other things to do; Felix seems content to keep watch over the monster he won’t even grace with a pronoun.

* * *

  1. _ if this is about deserving then you’re screwed, so fucking screwed_

Felix does seem more content these days than he ever did before. In spite of everything. They’ve all gotten older, wiser. His eyes are calmer. He stands taller.

(He didn’t _get_ taller, though, and he’s still just as ready to deck Sylvain for teasing about this as he was five years ago.)

* * *

  1. _ figures you train your whole life not to give a fuck and then:_

“He’ll come back, you know,” Sylvain says one day when they’re assigned to clear away the rubble.

“Who will?”

“Dimitri,” says Sylvain. “His Majesty the Boar. You know.”

Felix immediately relaxes into a scowl. “We don’t have to talk about him.”

“You’re not gonna bite me again, are you?”

Felix shoves him instead. “That was five years ago!”

“Don’t try and tell me you’ve gotten less violent.” Sylvain’s landed tailbone first on a brick and winces when he clambers back to a crouch; Felix shoots him a guilty look which he waves off. “I know you’re worried, Felix. You don’t have to pretend.”

Felix wavers for a moment between rage and denial before five years of war-torn maturation and steady friendship win him over and he slumps. “I hate seeing him like this.”

Sylvain flicks away a bit of gravel. “You remember when you bit me?”

“_Again?_ Sylvain—”

Sylvain laughs, holding up his hands. “Hey, relax, let me finish. You remember _why_ you bit me?”

“Yeah,” Felix mutters.

Sylvain continues anyway. “Because I told him you didn’t hate him. And he said he thought you did, because people change.”

Felix doesn’t interrupt, just watches him with those lamplike eyes. He looks like a cat.

“I said they do,” Sylvain goes on, “but they don’t go away.”

“He didn’t just change,” Felix says abruptly, looking back at the rubble. “He’s always been like this. Nobody saw except—”

“—except you, I know, but listen, Felix—does that really look like a beast craving blood?” Sylvain gestures inside. “Looks like a sad sack of crazy to me.”

Felix’s face crinkles into something almost offended.

“You really think he’s getting any actual joy out of all that murdering and pillaging?” Sylvain asks him. “We’ve killed people, too.”

“Not like he does.”

Sylvain shrugs. “Choose your flavour, but war is war.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Felix says. “Why’d you volunteer to do this with me if you just want to talk about him?”

Sylvain looks at him in surprise. “What, you wanna just chat? With _me_?”

“I thought we were _friends_,” Felix mocks, looking snide again. “Didn’t you say that before I bit you?”

“Yeah, but then you bit me, so I didn’t think you were with me.”

“Well, we _are_,” Felix mutters. “And if we weren’t before then we definitely are now, so just shut up.”

“Aw. I’m touched, Felix.”

“Shut up,” Felix says again, but actually smiles at him. “Thanks, Sylvain.”

“What for?”

“I dunno. Stop talking or I’ll cave your face in.”

Sylvain tosses a brick into Felix’s lap, so Felix throws dust in Sylvain’s face, and Byleth clucks disapprovingly at them when they report their progress (bad) still laughing and covered in grit, but Sylvain thinks he spots a tiny smile on their blank face.

* * *

Sylvain turns out to be right—Dimitri wakes up because Rodrigue won’t anymore, and Felix does not fall apart but nor does he seem to come together.

When Sylvain knocks on his door, Felix lets him in, but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even look different.

“You okay?” Sylvain asks, because he has to.

Felix shoots him a withering look. “Are you just here to coddle me?”

“Nah,” says Sylvain. “I know you’re fine.”

“Then why’d you come?”

“Cos I’ve known you a long time,” says Sylvain, “and you’ve never shut yourself in your room like this before. Plus, you know. Thought I might finally get to see it, since you’re actually in here for once.”

Felix’s lip twitches.

“I always knew he’d go out doing something like that,” he says. “He always was an idiot.”

Sylvain shrugs. “You talk a lot about hating all those knightly values, but put that aside for a sec. As if you wouldn’t die to save a friend.”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Would you die to save me?” Sylvain asks, unable to help himself.

Felix kicks him. “I’d kill you if you made me,” he says.

“Ha. Well, a promise is a promise.” Sylvain winks. “I’m gonna go train. Join me later if you want.” He turns to go.

“How’s the boar?” Felix asks suddenly, sounding equally like he can’t help himself.

Sylvain pauses.

“He’s good,” he says, looking back over his shoulder to smile. “He’s back.”

* * *

Things Sylvain can’t stop thinking: Felix’s stupid new hairdo suits him. Emphasises his sharp jaw. Throws the shine in his eyes into sharp relief every time he smiles, which he’s also doing now. And he blushes more, and not just because he’s angry. Probably because Dimitri keeps smiling at him.

And Dimitri is actually laughing again. Who could have seen it coming? He’s teasing Felix at the table and Felix is actually copping it, as much as Felix is able to, and just—_wow_. The _growth_. His team has gotten so mature. Really coming into themselves. A group of people to be proud of.

Sylvain excuses himself early from dinner again and again and trains alone with shaking arms.

* * *

  1. _ what do you care about and is it what you should?_

Well, the atmosphere is lighter. Felix is happier. Spending more time with him. He should be happy. He _is_ happy. More time with Felix—more time with those newly laughing eyes and the victorious grin, more time with the noble heart he’d kill you for suggesting might be so. More time with Felix, standing tall, caring too much, and he actually looks _fond_ when he looks at Sylvain now, fuck. Fuck. The comfortable transition into _old friends_ isn’t doing him any favours. He’s in this deep.

“What’s up with you?” Felix asks him when he’s accidentally left his sword hand dangling limp at his side for too long, gazing a little open-mouthed at Felix re-tying his hair after a match. Sylvain closes his mouth and then opens it again to answer but at that moment Dimitri trips over the weapons rack and sends lances skittering across the floor, and the conversation is lost when Felix hurries to help stack them back up and make snide remarks at Dimitri.

Oh well. From this angle on Felix crawling on the floor he gets a pretty good view of Felix’s ass, and Sylvain is pretty good at pretending like that’s all he really cares about.

* * *

  1. _ yeah, everyone knows who you are._

When Sylvain manages to get Felix to agree to spend the evening with him at the tavern, he’s not sure what to expect. What he’s not expecting: Felix is a ridiculous lightweight.

“I am not drunk,” Felix insists. He probably isn’t actually drunk yet, just tipsy, but he’s also super red and kind of smiley and loopier than usual. It’s endearing… Felix is cute. “Fuck you.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Sylvain says, bemused.

“Yeah,” Felix mutters, “but fuck you. Buy me a drink.”

Sylvain stifles a laugh. “You haven’t even finished the one you’re holding.”

Wrong answer. Felix glares at him and tips the rest of his beer in his mouth, then scrunches up his face. “Ugh. Tastes like shit. Buy me another drink.”

“This isn’t like you,” Sylvain says, passing over the gold for another drink anyway, because, well. If he calls Felix out for self-destructing it would make him kind of a hypocrite.

“Fuck you, you don’t know me. Sylvain,” Felix says, this time tapering into a whine. “Sylvain.”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

Felix gestures vaguely and then lets his arm drop onto the table. “Yeah.”

“You okay?” Sylvain asks him, amused.

“You’re… here,” Felix tells him.

“Sure am.”

Felix thinks this over.

“I’m lonely,” he announces, then chugs the rest of his beer.

“Ah,” says Sylvain. “Join the club.”

“You,” says Felix, “are always, with girls.”

“Yeah,” says Sylvain. “But you know? I’d rather hang out with you.”

Felix nods thoughtfully. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m… tired. Of losing friends. To the war.”

Ah. This has gotten a bit solemn. Is Felix a sad drunk? “No one’s died yet.” Shouldn’t have added the _yet_. But Felix doesn’t seem to notice—he just sniffs and sips forlornly at Sylvain’s drink.

“Hey, I mean,” says Sylvain. “I was right, wasn't I? His Highness is back and he's better than ever. Just like old times. And you two”—it tastes like rusty nails deep in his throat—“I mean, you two've got a great old thing going on—”

Felix barks out a laugh and slumps over the table, rolling his head up on one arm to fix Sylvain with a look. “Yeah,” he says vaguely. “Yeah, a great thing. Just—real great.”

Look, Sylvain is good, but there's only so much he can do with this cryptic—okay, useless remark. “Yeah, I mean,” he says, “you don't have to hide it from me, Felix. We've been friends since, like, birth. I know you. You can tell me. You're into him, right?” _Into him_—what a joke. Felix has been in love with Dimitri since they were three.

Felix hiccups.

“I mean—” Sylvain starts again.

“Have you seen,” Felix slurs in a low voice, “the way he looks. At the professor?”

Sylvain's blood goes cold even while his heart pumps it more frantically through his veins.

“No, can't say I have,” he says casually.

Felix snorts. “Some love expert.”

What can Sylvain tell him? He can't say _I didn't notice because I watch you, not him_. But Felix isn't listening anyway.

“Thanks,” he mumbles. “This was nice. Had fun. You're—you're real good, Sylvain.”

Hm. Maybe Felix is a sincere drunk. Or an affectionate one. Sylvain is half trying to sort this new information about Dimitri and Byleth and half resisting the urge to pet Felix’s hair back where it’s fallen out of its weird combover.

“Hey,” he says. “Anytime, Felix. You know I'm always here for you.” _Me. I'm always here for you, even if he’s not._

God, he’s a jealous asshole.

“Maybe I should...” Felix trails off into a slurred mess. “You. Instead.”

_Ah. This_ has gone in a direction.

Sylvain laughs, a little high-pitched and nervous. “There's an idea. You and me, huh?”

“Not a pretty girl,” Felix mutters.

“Aw, you're plenty pretty, Felix.” Sylvain gently removes Felix's tankard. “Well, you know where to find me. You ever want to—ah—blow off some steam, or whatever.”

Felix blinks up at him.

“Or whatever,” Sylvain repeats awkwardly. “You know, only if you're comfortable—”

“He said I'm a good friend,” Felix says, which is such a non-sequitur that Sylvain is momentarily confused before his heart sinks back into reality. _Ah. He was thinking about Dimitri this whole time._

He probably hadn't heard a word Sylvain had said. Probably for the best.

“Well, I'm sure you are,” he says.

Felix looks blankly into nothing. “Yeah,” he says. “I don't—it hurts.”

“Yeah.”

“You don't know.”

“Yeah,” says Sylvain again. “Yeah, buddy, I really do.”

* * *

Sylvain isn't sure how much Felix remembers the day after, but if he's worried Felix is going to ignore him or be awkward, he needn't have been. Felix greets him warmly—more warmly than usual, even — and he gets the sense their relationship has shifted a little for the stronger. Well, good. Felix can be all the closer to jam the knife into his heart about it. Better aim.

Now that he's watching for it, he sees that Felix is right about Byleth. Sylvain's not quite sure how he missed it before. Dimitri lights up whenever they're in the room, gaze more enamoured than a war council should warrant, and the drop in Felix's smile or his gaze falling from Dimitri to the table usually coincides with Dimitri laughing at something Byleth said.

He doesn't know if Felix remembers his offer, so he doesn't bring it up again.

* * *

At least not for a while.

* * *

  1. _ a bargain, really._

Felix freezes right after he says it. Sylvain feels when Felix goes still in his arms, feels it because it’s just when Sylvain’s heart goes totally cold. Colder because he’s… not really surprised.

Felix won’t look at him. He’s still fixedly staring into Sylvain’s chest, into where he’d murmured _Dimitri…_ half a moment ago.

“Felix,” Sylvain says softly.

“I’m—” Felix chokes. “Sylvain—I’m—”

“Felix,” Sylvain says again. “You can call me anything you want.”

Felix’s head snaps up in shock, but the bitterness is already settling in. Every part of Sylvain is lined with bile, every crack and seam and broken, battered piece of him. It has been for as long as he could remember. The monkey’s paw, the two-edged sword, the Crest at the cost of the brother who hated him, the lovers for whom the name was a vile and generous lie.

Everything with its price. Felix in his arms, in his bed, finally, _finally_, but only for—and not for—

(“What’s a little stress relief between friends,” he’d said at the foot of their recent battle, and Felix, harsh and trembling and stained with too much friendly blood, had fallen into him.)

Now, those familiar big eyes, staring up at him in mingled wonder and abject horror, fist closed around his open shirt.

“I won’t tell,” Sylvain says.

“I’m not—that’s weird,” Felix spits, eyes slitting again. “Don’t be weird.”

“You’re the one who just moaned _Dimitri_ at—hey, _ow_! You _said_ it!”

“Shut up,” Felix snaps, pink in the face and looking like he might try to smack Sylvain again. “Just—whatever.”

He doesn’t say _Dimitri_ again, but Sylvain can’t help but notice he doesn’t say _Sylvain_, either.

* * *

  1. _ a step-by-step guide on how not to deal with the fact that you’re in this too deep_

Felix approaches him the next day, red in the face and armed with a speech.

“It's fine,” Sylvain cuts him off before he can even start. “Felix, it's fine. We're on the same page.”

“I didn't mean to—”

“I know,” Sylvain says.

“When I said—”

“I _know_,” Sylvain says again. “I told you, it's fine.”

Felix frowns. “But we should—”

“It was just a bit of fun,” Sylvain says. “You don't need to explain anything to me.” He laughs. “Relax. I'm not gonna _catch feelings_ off touching your—”

“_Sylvain_,” Felix hisses, but he looks relieved.

He looks relieved.

_Relax_, said Sylvain, _I don't have feelings for you_, and Felix's face said _thank god_.

Okay. Yeah. They're on the same page.

“Just a bit of fun,” Sylvain repeats, lightly. “You had fun, right?”

Felix looks guilty and uncomfortable. “I'm really sorry about what I—”

“Like I didn't know,” Sylvain interrupts, laughing. “We're cool, Felix. I said it was fine, didn't I?”

“Are you ever going to let me finish a full sentence?” Felix complains, but reluctantly smiles back. “Whatever. As long as—yeah. Yeah.”

Yeah. Just a one-off.

“We're good,” says Sylvain, and Felix nods once and walks off.

* * *

  1. _ round and round and round it goes_

Sometimes the world ends at the gate to Enbarr and all Sylvain can think is _god, oh my god, Ingrid was right_. Five years ago, Ingrid was right. Mercedes can’t hear him screaming. Felix can’t hear anything.

“Felix, come on, you’ve got to—come on—” Why did he use that last vulnerary on _himself_? Why didn’t he insist on focusing faith? Why was he so—“Come _on_, Felix!” They’re so close to the end. So fucking close to the end—

Then—a flash of—

“Sorry,” gasps Annie, appearing from fucking _nowhere_ like an _angel_, sinking to her knees and shakily performing another heal. “Sorry—I’m not as good as Mercie—”

Sylvain could kiss her. Felix’s face is white and his eyes are still closed but the blood isn’t flowing freely anymore under Sylvain’s shaking hands.

“Hey, Felix,” Annie’s mumbling, steady fingers pulling at Felix’s lips to tip an elixir into his mouth. She’s humming something, smooth and calm, though her eyes are just as frantic as Sylvain’s. And then Felix opens his eyes. “Hey, you made it.”

“Felix,” Sylvain says, weak. He slumps over Felix’s body. “Wow. I thought you were gonna break our promise for a second, there.”

Felix coughs once and then his whole body seizes up with a nasty fit of gagging and hacking, and Sylvain’s pressing hands to his shoulders to keep him still and Annie’s murmuring reassurances, trying to make him swallow the elixir—but he won’t. He’s closed a hand around Annie’s wrist and he’s got another shaking on Sylvain’s chest. “Dimitri,” he gasps. “Where is he?”

“He’s—he’s at the front. Right at the front.” Sylvain clasps his hand and tries to focus over the roaring blood in his ears. “Felix. You have to relax so the healing—Felix!” Felix is scrambling up, stumbling on bloodless legs—“Felix! You have to rest—”

“Have to go,” Felix mumbles. “Come on—we have to go.”

“Felix!” Annette cries, but he’s limping off to join the front line. “I’ll get Mercie,” she says miserably to Sylvain and sprints off. He’s left alone to stare at Felix’s blood all over his hands and armour, drenching the courtyard tile.

He’s a bad soldier. A bad knight. When Dimitri emerges victorious from the throne room, after everything, after _everything_, Sylvain can’t feel anything.

* * *

  1. _ the things that actually do matter, if you think about them_

Sylvain can’t make his usual pilgrimage to the monastery training hall now that they’ve returned to Faerghus, but it turns out he’s not so far removed from the childhood he’s mostly repressed. Ingrid, Felix, and Dimitri were down at the castle training hall constantly, because Glenn was down there constantly, so Sylvain was also down there constantly, because anywhere they were and Miklan wasn’t was somewhere better to be.

He hasn’t been back at the castle for years, but he finds himself retracing the route without thinking. He doesn’t know what he’s hoping to find. Maybe just something to mindlessly beat the shit out of.

Kinda funny. The war’s over. There’s nothing to worry about anymore.

It’s late—_really_ late—so he’s not expecting to find anyone there, but when he reaches the doorway he hears shouting.

“I don’t understand why everyone loves you so _fucking much_,” someone is yelling, “because you _being here right now_ is making me want to rip your fucking head off,” and Sylvain thinks, _Ah, it’s Felix and Dimitri_.

Dimitri’s voice: “Please calm down.”

“I’m fucking calm—”

“I don’t understand what I’ve said to make you so angry—”

“Of course you don’t. You never fucking listen, you don’t—god, do you even think—”

“Please just tell me what I said. I was only telling you I enjoyed sparring with you, and it reminded me of when we were young sparring with—”

“Stop _comparing_ me to Glenn,” Felix hisses. “When will you stop—”

“Ah…”

“You never stop—you always—”

“Felix—”

“He’s _dead_. He’s dead and I’m the one who’s still here. Did you ever actually see me, or was I just a replacement for him?”

“Felix!” Dimitri sounds shocked. “Felix, I could never—”

“Just shut up,” Felix spits. “Shut up and get out. I am so _tired _of… You know the whole time you were gone I never stopped—” A long pause. “Just get out.”

Another long pause. Then footsteps. And Sylvain thinks _shit_ and ducks behind a corner before Dimitri opens the door and slips out, and he watches the Crown Prince soon-to-be-King of a newly united Fodlan trudge up the hall and out of sight.

Sylvain waits another moment, then steps out and pulls open the door.

Felix is jabbing viciously at a dummy with no technique or finesse—just stabbing it seemingly at random and swinging at its neck with the flat of his wooden blade. This does not actually do a thing to the dummy, because Sylvain remembers they’d had to reinforce all the equipment at the castle after Dimitri broke one too many lances.

“Hey,” he says, and Felix does not react or turn around, just keeps stabbing the dummy. “You good?”

“What did you hear.”

“What?” says Sylvain.

“What did you—”

Sylvain’s already holding up his hands. “Didn’t hear anything, man. I heard yelling and then I saw Dimitri leaving. You okay?”

“Great.”

“Cool,” says Sylvain. “So should I just hang around until you wanna talk or—”

“Leave me alone.”

Sylvain takes a seat and watches, just like he always used to. “Yeah, not gonna do that, bud,” he says. “I’ll hang out as long as it takes to get you to talk.”

“You’ll be here forever, then.”

“Fine with me,” says Sylvain.

Felix turns around and fixes him with a hard glare.

Sylvain sits back and crosses his arms.

After a second, Felix shrugs and turns back around. “Whatever.”

_Just like old times._ What a joke. Sylvain watches Felix steadily destroy the training dummy for a good forty minutes and it feels like time doesn’t pass. It could be five years ago, no war no diplomacy, make believing like Felix isn’t the next Duke Fraldarius and Sylvain the next whatever whatever. Fourteen years ago and they’re all best friends and Felix has his family and Dimitri has his marbles and Sylvain’s brother only wants him dead but hasn’t turned into a fucking demon monster about it. You know, those good old days. Felix takes a swing hard enough with his blunt-ass wooden sword to take the dummy’s head clean off and stands panting with his sword limp in his grip, forged iron over years, and says, “I’m really tired.”

Sylvain barks a laugh.

“Just tired,” Felix says, and drops his sword on the floor and starts punching the shit out of the decapitated dummy.

“You wanna maybe rest up, then?” says Sylvain.

“Not—”

“I know that’s not what you meant,” says Sylvain. “I still reckon you ought to lay off.”

Felix grunts, which means _no_ or in Felix-ese _fuck off_, which Sylvain expected.

“Funny, right,” says Sylvain. “War’s over. We’re meant to relax now.”

Punch, punch, kick. The dummy tips dangerously but rights itself again, looking weary for stuffed straw and burlap and whatever the hell else is in there.

“Only, it ended so quick I kind of don’t know what to do now,” says Sylvain. “I feel like a popped balloon or something.”

“You wanted the war to go on longer?”

Sylvain snorts. “Yeah. That’s what I wanted, idiot.”

Felix makes a sound that means he’s laughing but still angry so it’s not laughter and if you say it is then he’ll beat you up, which is something Sylvain has learned several times.

“Just tell me seriously, Felix. Are you okay?”

“What about you?” says Felix, not looking around. “You alright?”

“You dodged the question,” Sylvain points out.

“Yeah, you’d know something about that. Get up, spar with me.”

“I dunno, man, I’m kinda tired,” says Sylvain, but laughs and gets up when Felix takes a breath to be derisive at him. “Yeah, I got it. C’mere.”

Felix takes a swing at him and it’s way too hard but Sylvain catches it and ducks out of the way easily. “Been a while,” Sylvain says after a minute. “You’ve always got a sword. Kinda forgot you can—ow—really deck me if you feel like it.”

“Stop talking,” Felix grunts. “Dodge better.”

“Nah,” says Sylvain. “You know what they say about the best defence.”

“Unh?”

Sylvain feints and catches Felix in the side of the head, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to send him stumbling aside, then trips him up so he crashes to the floor.

Then just to make his point, plants a foot on Felix’s chest and announces, “Victory!”

“Funny,” Felix grumbles. “You know I’d been training for ages before you got here.”

“Excuses,” Sylvain grins. “I used to use that on you all the time. You didn’t see it coming?”

“From when we were _ten_? Forgive me if I had more important things to remember.”

What Sylvain doesn’t say: _Did you ever forget any of Dimitri’s moves?_

What Sylvain does say: “From when _you_ were ten. I was thirteen, little man.”

“Whatever,” Felix says, pushing Sylvain’s foot off him and tugging his leg so Sylvain loses his balance. “Fuck you.”

Sylvain loses the battle to stay standing and concedes to sit cross-legged at Felix’s side where he’s still collapsed on his back. “Sore loser,” he says.

“Nah, just hadn’t said it today.” Felix throws an arm over his eyes. “Thanks for that.”

“No problem.” Sylvain starts picking pieces of straw off the floor and stacking them on Felix’s tummy. “So? You beat the shit out of me. Gonna talk now?”

“You’re still on that?”

“I’ll sit here all day,” says Sylvain.

“Then I’ll leave,” says Felix, not moving.

“Okay. Then I’ll sit here alone and starve.”

“I’ll let you,” Felix scoffs.

“Until Dimitri pisses you off again and you have no one to run to.” Felix removes his arm temporarily to glare at Sylvain and Sylvain grins back at him. “Just like old times.”

“Shut up.” Felix covers his eyes again. “Whatever. I’m just tired.”

“He really doesn’t see Glenn when he sees you, you know,” says Sylvain.

Felix sits up so fast that straw goes flying. “You fucking liar,” he says, casually, “you were listening.”

“I wasn’t. I was _standing_, and you were shouting. He doesn’t see Glenn. He sees you.” They’re talking about Dimitri again and it’s Sylvain’s own fucking fault, which it usually is, because Felix pretty much never voluntarily talks about Dimitri but Sylvain unfortunately knows him way too well which entails knowing that he basically always _wants to_, and also Sylvain is an idiot who will sniff out all Felix’s Secret Desires and then bend over backwards to meet them (and pre-emptively, not a word about that).

“How would you know,” Felix says dully.

Sylvain shrugs. “I mean, I don’t. I don’t see things from his perspective. I’ve got both my eyes.” He needs to stop joking about that, it’s fucked, but Dimitri always laughs so he figures he’s mostly good. “Just, he was always on about those ghosts, and I don’t know why he’d talk about seeing Glenn everywhere else when he could’ve just been seeing him in you.”

Felix has gone silent.

“He never called you Glenn,” says Sylvain.

“No,” says Felix. “Just the empty air.”

Sylvain jerks his head. “Ghosts are ghosts,” he says, “and they hang around, but I don’t think he ever mixed them up with the ones who were living.”

“No, he just didn’t care about them,” Felix spits.

“Can’t speak to that,” says Sylvain. He starts stacking straw on Felix’s head.

“Cut that out,” Felix snaps, smacking his hand.

Sylvain begins carefully braiding some straw into the hair that’s come loose from Felix’s hair tie.

“Oi,” Felix says without venom.

“You know he’s back now,” Sylvain says, ignoring him, because Felix hasn’t moved and that means acquiescence, at least until Felix suddenly decides he’s not cool with it anymore and scratches him or something. “You don’t have to keep punishing him for what he was like. He couldn’t control it.”

“Why do you always defend him?” Felix asks.

“Because I know you want to, way down there in repressed-Felix-land,” Sylvain says, “and won’t. So call me the voice in your head.”

“I do _not_—”

“Tell me why the hell you’d be this pissed all the time if you didn’t still love him, Felix,” Sylvain snaps. “Just own up to your fixation on the poor guy and stop confusing him, it’s giving me whiplash.”

“Why do _you_ care?” asks Felix, when he’s done spluttering.

“Because I’m your _fucking_ friend and it gets pretty fucking tiring watching you all destroy yourselves, like we didn’t have an imperial overlord on the same job for five goddamn years,” Sylvain says, lightly, too lightly, more lightly than makes sense for all his cussing. “Quit doing her job, will you? Tell _me_ you love him, if you won’t tell him.”

“I—” Felix growls and kicks the sword at his feet before curling into a ball. “No.”

“That’s as good as,” Sylvain says drily.

“It’s pointless,” Felix says into his knees. “Whatever.”

“Because of the professor,” Sylvain says, and Felix doesn’t move or talk, which means he’s right. “Do they love him?”

“How the hell should I know,” says Felix. “You’re the expert.”

“Aw, Felix. You’ve known me this long and you think I know a single goddamn thing about real love?” Sylvain scruffs Felix’s hair, which still has straw in it and makes him growl. “Should I be touched or fucking offended?”

Felix snorts.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “What the professor thinks doesn’t matter. It still—he still—”

“Doesn’t love you,” says Sylvain.

Again, no movement.

“He does, though,” Sylvain says. “You know he does.”

“Not like that,” says Felix, still in a ball.

“And it’s not enough, even though it should be,” says Sylvain, not waiting for Felix to answer. “Yeah, I know.”

* * *

  1. _ and it fucking sucks_

Hey, Felix. What’s Dimitri got that I don’t? Besides the obvious, I mean—like, the capacity to love another human being for real, or whatever. Is it history? Conviction? Values? Maybe it’s just that he doesn’t love you back. You scared of a little reciprocity, Fraldarius? Too real for you? Possibility of being loved back just too much for you? Or maybe it’s the fact that I keep saying fucked up shit like that.

Probably that.

* * *

  1. _ moving down the track, but the scenery looks familiar_

“His Grace, Duke Fraldarius,” announces a herald, and Felix steps out of his little carriage and it’s a mark of how much he’s grown that he doesn’t roll his eyes immediately.

“Hail, Duke Fraldarius,” says Sylvain, as pompously as he can manage.

“Hail, dickhead,” says Felix, so maybe he hasn’t grown that much after all.

“Really, Your Grace,” says Sylvain, placing a hand over his heart. “Can we not attend to the formalities?”

“Hail, Margrave dickhead,” says Felix, ignoring the pained look of his attendants to grin at Sylvain.

“Good enough,” says Sylvain, grinning back. “Hey, Felix. Long time, no see.”

“Seriously,” Felix grumbles, handing his bags off to a House Gautier attendant with a nod of thanks. “It’s been nonstop meetings and letters and—administrative garbage. I miss my sword.”

“I don’t miss your sword,” Sylvain says. “If you don’t have it then I can hug you without getting stabbed.”

“Don’t,” Felix warns, but Sylvain is sweeping him into a hug anyway. “Oh, whatever.”

“Coming from you, that’s as good as a hug back,” Sylvain starts to say, but then Felix actually does hug him back. “Whoa. Am I dead? Is this heaven?”

Now Felix shoves him away. “Shut up. Where’s my room.”

“Guess I pushed my luck,” Sylvain laughs, pulling Felix back into the estate. “Follow me, I’ll show you.”

It’s not a huge place like the castle, so the trek to Felix’s room isn’t that long, but it’s still long enough for Sylvain to put his foot in it. It’s a special talent. “Hey, did you hear about Dimitri and Byleth?” he blurts before he can regret it, which he immediately does.

“Who hasn’t,” Felix grumbles, but doesn’t actually look that upset about it. “The stupid boar’s announced it for all the heavens to hear.” There’s a short pause before he adds quietly, “I’m glad for them. He… he’s really happy.”

“You heard from him much lately?” Sylvain says lightly.

Felix snorts. “The boar? He won’t fucking leave me alone. I think he wants me to be his advisor, or some shit, I don’t know.”

“You? Advisor?” It comes out more incredulous than Sylvain means it to.

Felix looks like he doesn’t know whether he should be offended or agree.

“You gonna do it?”

“I don’t know.” They arrive at Felix’s door but Felix doesn’t make a move to push it open. Instead, he turns to face Sylvain. “I don’t know,” he repeats.

Sylvain looks at him. Felix always had frowned a lot, but the permanent crease in his brow seems to be more from stress now than perpetual bad attitude. “Hey, lighten up,” he says. “Don’t think about it so hard.”

Felix shoots him a withering look and opens the door. “Easy for you to say. Have you ever experienced a thought in your life?”

“I try not to,” Sylvain tells him cheerfully, but catches his shoulder before he can go inside. “Seriously. Are you okay?”

For a second he expects a biting remark, but Felix just sighs. “Yeah,” he says, “thanks.”

“’Course,” says Sylvain, and lets him go. “So… you bringing anyone to the wedding?”

“Um…” Felix actually looks a little flustered, which makes Sylvain’s stomach do a stupid flip. “I don’t know. I should. I was thinking I should—uh, I don’t know.”

“We could go together,” Sylvain offers, dying as he says it. _Fodlan’s Top Romantic Destinations: the wedding of your best friend and target of your date’s undying love since forever_. “If you don’t have a date.”

Felix looks a little relieved. “Yeah. That’ll save me the trouble of asking—yeah, sounds good.”

Asking _who_? Sylvain doesn’t ask, in the interests of preserving his happiness or his farcical illusion thereof, whatever. Although he can’t deny his spirits are dimmer at the prospect of being Felix’s stand-in, and clearly only a stand-in _friend_ at that, not even a stand-in _date_. “Cool. Done.”

“Yeah,” says Felix.

They stand there for a second, looking at Felix’s bags on the floor beside his bed. Felix leans down to start unpacking.

“So,” says Sylvain foot-in-mouth Gautier. “Remember that time you called me Dimitri in bed?” Felix drops the bag on Sylvain’s foot and it looks like it actually was an accident—or Sylvain thinks it does, he can’t see through the tears forming in his eyes. “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Felix says, recovering from his mild choking fit. “Why the fuck did you bring that up?”

“It was funny,” says Sylvain, lying. “And it was a long time ago, so I figured we could look back and laugh or whatever. Reminisce like normal old friends.”

“It wasn’t that long ago,” Felix points out, picking up his bag again. “You’re a fucking weirdo.”

“Oh, _I’m_ the weirdo.”

An attendant hurries in. “I’ll take care of that, Your Grace,” he insists, taking the bag from Felix.

“It’s no trouble,” Felix says, “I can—”

“Please, allow me.” And they find themselves being ushered out of the room.

“Your staff are pushy,” Felix says.

“I keep telling them to chill,” Sylvain says. “We’ve got enough to deal with without all that formal bullshit—well, whatever. Can’t say it’s not nice to get to put my feet up sometimes, or whatever. There’s just so much to do.”

Felix sighs. “You can say that again.”

“Wanna go for a walk?” Sylvain offers. “Or a ride?”

“You fixed the stables? Sure, yeah.”

They meander down to the stables where Felix briefly mourns the absence of the single horse that had tolerated him. “Casualty of war,” Sylvain says, kissing his fingers and holding them up to the sky, and Felix laughs, because it’s not funny at all. Felix selects another horse which seems to maybe not hate him that much and they ride in silence for a bit.

“Hey,” says Felix, after a bit.

“Yeah?”

“Back at the monastery,” says Felix, “and—you know, during all that—whatever… yeah?”

“Sure,” says Sylvain, not understanding at all, because that was about the vaguest bullshit he’s ever heard.

Felix fumbles a little more. “With the boar—with Dimitri,” he says. “And—and me. And my—you know.”

Seiros, this is pathetic, even for Felix. “Yeah,” Sylvain says again.

Felix struggles.

“How did you… know?” he asks. “About—about me.”

“How did I know you were in love with Dimitri?” Sylvain deadpans, which almost makes Felix fall off his horse and does no favours to the horse’s suspicions of him. Sylvain ignores Felix’s angry spluttering and says, “You were really obvious, for one.”

“Shut up,” Felix mutters. “Not to anyone else.”

“Yeah, well, I grew up with you, didn’t I?”

“You grew up with _him_, too,” says Felix. “You didn’t notice his whole thing with Byleth.”

Fuck. “Were they that obvious? Maybe you were just laser-focused because you were obsessed with him.”

“I will run you through with my lance,” Felix warns.

“You’re not _carrying_ one.”

“I will go fetch my lance, and then run you through with my—and yes, they _were_ that obvious.” Sylvain can’t argue with that. Once he’d started paying attention, it had been just about impossible to miss. “I mean, maybe I was paying more attention than others were, but—there’s no way I was more obvious than that stupid boar.”

This is very dangerous territory, so Sylvain says weakly, “Hey, there are apples in that tree. Let’s get some.”

“What?” asks Felix, looking. “Oh. Sure.”

_Nailed it._

An armful of apples later, during which Sylvain begins to regret his distraction tactic because they didn’t bring a fucking basket and now he’s just sitting on a horse balancing a fuckton of apples in his arms looking like a complete loser, Felix says quietly, “Hey, Sylvain?”

“Yeah?”

Felix awkwardly rearranges the apples in his own arms.

“Back then,” he says. “Were you… I mean, did you ever… Was I…”

Sylvain waits.

“I mean,” Felix says, and stops.

Sylvain waits for the axe to fall, for Felix Hugo Fraldarius to ask an honest question about emotions for the first time in his goddamn life—a first he can take, if no others.

“Never mind,” Felix finishes. “Forget it.”

Sylvain slumps in his saddle from—relief? Disappointment? Knowing? Holding too many apples? (They’re spilling out of his arms and his horse is snorfing at them as they fall.)

“Okay,” he says, shrugging (losing more apples). “Whatever you want, Felix.”

Felix looks into his apples, conflict clear on his face. Whatever he was to anyone else, to Sylvain, he was always an open book. Anger, hurt, distress, badly disguised joy—Sylvain was the one person who never had trouble reading Felix. Love, pain, resignation, offended by horse—it was always only Sylvain, Sylvain who knew, who could solve the problem and make the hurt go away and make Felix smile, even (especially) at his expense.

“Let’s head back to the estate,” Felix murmurs. “We have to let Dimitri know we’re not bringing plus-ones to his royal circus of the century.”

Sylvain laughs. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says. He offers Felix a wide grin, the one that says _everything’s cool_. “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> ... stan list ✨💅
> 
> yo find me on twitter [@corviiid](https://twitter.com/corviiid) and talk dimilix fraydlayrlylldyd to me babey
> 
> if you like my name and work here on the ao3 please know that i am also a fan of coffee. :]


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